Subang Airport has one advantage KLIA can never replicate: location.
For people living around Petaling Jaya, Subang Jaya, Shah Alam and much of Kuala Lumpur, getting to Subang can be significantly easier than travelling all the way to Sepang. Yet why Subang Airport is underutilised has less to do with whether passengers like the airport and more to do with how many flights airlines can operate from it — and whether those flights make economic sense.
Subang handled 1.86 million passenger movements in 2025, up 30.5% from 1.43 million a year earlier. Its terminal, however, has already been upgraded to handle around 3 million passengers annually.
That puts actual passenger traffic at roughly 62% of its current nominal capacity.
So why isn’t the airport fuller?
One common explanation is airport tax.
It isn’t that simple.
The Passenger Service Charge paid by passengers does not give Subang an obvious cost disadvantage.
Under Malaysia’s current 2024–2026 charging structure, the domestic Passenger Service Charge remains RM11 at most Malaysian airports.
For international departures, Subang falls under the RM50 category, the same rate applied at KLIA Terminal 2 and other airports covered by that structure. KLIA Terminal 1 is RM73.
There are, of course, other costs involved in running an airline: landing charges, parking, ground handling, fuel, navigation, staffing and commercial arrangements with airport operators.
Those total operating costs are not all publicly visible.
But the published regulated airport charges do not show a special Subang premium that would by itself explain why airlines have moved jet operations back to KLIA.
The bigger limitation is not what airlines are charged.
It is how much they can actually operate.
This is where the 3 million passenger capacity figure can be misleading.
A terminal capable of processing 3 million passengers does not mean airlines can simply schedule enough flights to bring 3 million passengers through it.
Subang’s jet operation is restricted.
Malaysia Airports has said the government currently caps jet operations at 15 slot pairs per day. The airport also has only six parking bays for narrow-body aircraft under its existing setup.
Scheduled jet operations are generally restricted to the 6am to 10pm operating window, partly because Subang Airport sits next to heavily populated residential areas.
That creates a very different environment from KLIA.
An airline cannot simply add flights whenever demand increases. It needs an available slot, aircraft parking and a workable departure time.
And not every slot has the same value.
A 7am flight to Singapore may appeal to business travellers who want to arrive before the working day begins.
A 2pm departure serves a different market.
For an airport that wants to position itself around convenience and business travel, having flights at the right times matters almost as much as having flights at all.
This may be the most important part of the Subang story.
Opening an airline operation at another airport creates costs.
Aircraft have to be based or rotated through the airport. Crews have to operate there. Ground handling has to be provided. Engineering support, equipment and other services have to be available.
An airline operating only a handful of flights has fewer passengers across which to spread those costs.
Batik Air Malaysia has made this point directly.
After taking over slots previously used by AirAsia and Firefly, Batik Air increased its allocation at Subang from six slots to 12 out of the airport’s 15 available jet slots.
Its CEO, Datuk Chandran Rama Muthy, told The Edge that the airline had invested heavily in facilities, resources and infrastructure at Subang, but needed economies of scale to spread those costs and make the operation profitable.
That tells us far more about the issue than airport tax does.
For airlines, Subang’s location is attractive.
But location alone does not pay for an operating base.
AirAsia brought scheduled jet services back to Subang in August 2024.
By 7 April 2025, its domestic Subang flights had been moved back to KLIA Terminal 2.
AirAsia did not blame airport tax.
It said consolidating the flights at KLIA T2 would improve capacity and operational efficiency, particularly as demand on routes such as Kuching and Kota Kinabalu increased.
The airline also acknowledged Subang’s biggest advantage: easier access for people living in the city.
But it said KLIA T2 had the infrastructure and scale required to support further growth.
That distinction matters.
Subang may be more convenient for the passenger.
KLIA can be more convenient for the airline.
AirAsia already operates a huge network from KLIA T2. Flights, aircraft and supporting operations are concentrated in one place.
Moving a relatively small number of flights to Subang gives passengers another airport option, but it does not necessarily give AirAsia the same economies of scale it already has at KLIA.
Firefly’s jet operation followed a similar path.
On 19 August 2025, Malaysia Aviation Group moved Firefly’s Boeing 737 jet services from Subang to KLIA Terminal 1.
Its turboprop operation remained at Subang.
MAG was quite specific about why.
It said the move would allow Firefly to scale its jet operation more efficiently, improve passenger connectivity and make better use of the group’s shared engineering, ground-handling and catering capabilities at KLIA.
That is important because Firefly did not reject Subang entirely.
Its ATR turboprop network continues to operate there.
The problem was scaling the larger jet operation.
Once again, the issue comes back to how much activity an airline can concentrate at one airport.
Subang and KLIA perform different jobs.
A Subang flight relies heavily on passengers who actually want to travel between Kuala Lumpur and that destination.
KLIA can draw from a much larger connecting network.
A passenger arriving from Tokyo can connect onwards to Kota Kinabalu. Someone flying into KLIA from London may continue to Penang. Another passenger can connect between two regional services without leaving the airport.
Those connecting passengers help airlines fill seats.
Subang has much less of this transfer traffic.
That doesn’t make Subang a bad airport.
It means its routes have to work primarily on strong direct demand.
Singapore, Jakarta and other relatively short routes can make sense because there are passengers who specifically value being able to depart much closer to the city.
Subang does not need to reproduce KLIA’s entire network for that model to work.
Even if Malaysia wanted to add more flights, there is another constraint: airspace.
Subang and KLIA are only around 45km apart.
The Edge has reported that their operations interact within the same heavily managed Klang Valley airspace, limiting how independently flights can arrive and depart from the two airports.
Malaysia Airports has also pointed to airspace capacity, aircraft parking and the existing jet-frequency cap as constraints on Subang’s growth.
This means expanding Subang is not simply a matter of building more departure gates.
Every additional aircraft movement has to fit into an air traffic system that also serves Malaysia’s main international airport.
KLIA remains the country’s primary hub.
Subang has to grow around it.
Then there is ground access.
Subang is marketed around its city location, yet its dedicated airport rail service has been suspended since February 2023.
The Skypark Link previously connected the airport with KL Sentral.
The service was stopped after passenger numbers became too low to justify running it.
There is now a plan to bring it back.
In September 2026, Transport Minister Anthony Loke said the Skypark Link will resume once the new terminal at Subang Airport is ready.
That matters.
Subang’s entire advantage is supposed to be convenience.
If passengers still need to rely heavily on private cars and e-hailing — particularly during Klang Valley peak-hour traffic — some of that advantage disappears.
A proper city airport needs more than a short distance on Google Maps.
It needs to be easy to reach.
By passenger numbers, yes.
The airport handled around 1.86 million passengers last year against current terminal capacity of around 3 million.
But that does not mean another 1.14 million passengers can simply be added under today’s operating conditions.
The passenger terminal has spare capacity.
The flight system is much more constrained.
And Malaysia Airports itself appears to recognise this.
In September 2026, Malaysia Airports managing director Datuk Mohd Izani Ghani said the RM22 million upgrade that doubled Subang’s passenger capacity from 1.5 million to 3 million is sufficient for now.
He said further expansion towards 5 million and eventually 8 million passengers should be considered once the current threshold is reached.
He also acknowledged that jet operations have yet to reach their full commercial potential because of limited aircraft bays, restricted operating hours and the cap of roughly one jet movement per hour.
That is a much more useful way to look at why Subang Airport is underutilised.
Malaysia does not currently have a terminal-capacity problem at Subang.
It has an operating-model problem.
The original Subang Airport Regeneration Plan was never supposed to turn Subang into KLIA 2.0.
The government’s stated plan was to develop three areas around the airport: a city airport, business aviation and an aerospace ecosystem.
Transport Minister Anthony Loke has also previously said Subang was intended to complement KLIA rather than replace it, with more focus on premium travellers, regional destinations and private aviation.
That distinction makes sense.
KLIA’s advantage is scale.
Subang’s advantage is location.
Trying to make Subang compete with KLIA by offering the same routes, through the same type of large airline bases, ignores the reason Subang is attractive in the first place.
A better use of limited Subang slots may be routes where saving travel time to the airport genuinely matters.
Short regional business trips.
High-demand point-to-point routes.
Flights where a passenger may willingly pay more to avoid travelling to Sepang.
That is closer to the idea of a genuine city airport.
Passenger traffic is already growing.
Five airlines currently operate from the airport, including Firefly, Batik Air, Scoot, TransNusa and HK Express, with regional connections that include Singapore, Jakarta and Hong Kong.
Batik Air is expanding there.
The train is planned to return.
Subang’s terminal still has passenger capacity available.
But there is a limit to how far any of this can go while jet frequencies remain capped, operating hours remain restricted, aircraft parking is limited and KLIA continues to receive priority as Malaysia’s main aviation hub.
So the answer to why Subang Airport is underutilised is not simply that its airport tax is too high.
It isn’t.
Subang has space for more passengers, but airlines need enough flights to make operating there worthwhile. Those flights need useful departure times, aircraft parking and enough scale to spread operating costs.
Malaysia also has to balance that growth against noise for surrounding residents and the need to protect capacity at KLIA.
The location is already there.
The passengers appear to want it.
What Subang still lacks is the operating freedom of a major airport.
And that may ultimately determine how much of its potential Malaysia can realistically use.
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